When political candidates concede a campaign, they praise the "long journey" and talk about how much they've "learned." In the same mode, Microsoft's CEO has all but said he's given up on the Zune.
If you just look at how thin he is, you'd know it. But now Steve Jobs himself has admitted that his declining health is keeping him from taking the Macworld stage tomorrow.
What did Steve Jobs do to his old buddy Bono? The Irish rock star, once the Apple CEO's adoring buddy, is funding the most credible threat to the iPhone yet.
Remember how Oprah once threatened to ruin the life of novelist Jonathan Franzen by selecting his book for her club and thereby making him lots and lots of money? Walmart might do the same to Apple's iPhone!
How to fill a slow holiday week for gossip about the Only Brand That Matters? Analyst firm Piper Jaffray has the cure: 12 unanswered questions about everything from Chinese iPhones (next year for sure) to netbooks (never, because "Apple doesn't do cheap.") Of course, the fun part about Apple predictions is they're always 100% wrong.
I'm skeptical, but Boy Genius Report has what's supposed to be an internal document from Walmart. It details the launch timeline to begin selling iPhones at Walmart on December 28. Here's what nags at me: Why not start the day after Thanksgiving, instead of three days after Christmas? It's not because unprepared staff and long lines would be a problem. Please explain to me how this is all part of His Steveness's master plan.
Silicon Valley entrepreneurs like to talk about their hopes of "changing the world." Yes, of course: Changing the world from one in which they are poor to one in which they are fabulously wealthy. The question in the air is whether the founders of companies do a better job at creating wealth, for themselves and their investors, than professional managers. With Yahoo announcing Jerry Yang's plans to step down as CEO, it would seem like a losing time for founders. But Yang is an exceptional case; he took his hands off the steering wheel when Yahoo had a mere five employees, and never really ran anything until he stepped in as CEO last June. Most founders of successful startups eagerly seize power, and have to be forcibly dislodged from the driver's seat. The best never let go. Just take a long-term look at the stock market, and you'll see why.
It is one of the most heartwarming narratives of Silicon Valley — the founder is abused and evicted by the suits and then returns triumphant. But that's not how it worked out for Jerry Yang, ousted as Yahoo's CEO Monday by a suddenly restive board. Until yesterday, Yang was never much abused by Yahoo's suits; if anything, he was coddled for more than a decade, granted the honorific of "Chief Yahoo" and allowed a say in the Internet portal's strategy. He held a seat on the company's board, and played a role in courting executives like former CEO Terry Semel; but until last year, he never had to operate a business.Experience is underrated in Silicon Valley. Novices are thought to do better than old hands. But the truth is that the intensity of actually running a startup — raising money, hiring people, assembling desks by hand — is better training than that provided by most business schools. Looked at that way, Yang gave up way too early, hiring a professional CEO when the company only had five employees. A graduate-school dropout, Yang had no management experience, and no predilection for the task. He is still, to this day, famously indecisive and fatally nice. Steve Jobs has rarely spoken about the heartbreaking experience of being cast out of Apple, the company he cofounded. In June 2005, though, he gave a commencement speech at Stanford University and openly discussed it. "I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me," he said. "The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life." Yang's exit, like his entrance, is far too soft. He will remain CEO until the board finds a replacement; he will remain Chief Yahoo after that. Such kid-gloves treatment does him no favors. For his own good, Yahoo should exile Yang, as Apple did with Jobs, and give him a chance, at last, to prove himself. His golf score may suffer; his nights may prove sleepless. But they say tough economic times are when the best companies are born. Perhaps he'll correct the mistakes he made at Yahoo with his next company. And maybe — if there's still a Yahoo left to welcome him back, if it hasn't been swallowed up by Microsoft or News Corp. or AT&T — he'll return to his first company a conquering hero. And prove that Silicon Valley's tale of the prodigal founder isn't so mythical.
Gene Wood, an operations manager at Ask.com, the Barry Diller-owned search engine beloved by Midwestern moms, wrestled a mugger to the ground rather than lose his iPhone, for which he paid $499. While riding on a subway train in San Francisco and watching a movie, Wood felt a hand reach behind him and snatch the phone. Wood, who is 6 feet tall and weighs 240 pounds, jumped from his seat and pursued the thief. Here's his harrowing account of how he got his iPhone back through hand-to-hand combat — and got away with just one small, if nasty, head wound:
You can buy an iPhone at Best Buy, but more likely you won't buy anything at all this Xmas. The company's revised forecast predicts revenue between now and February may drop by 15 percent. CEO Brad Anderson's official statement is blunt: "Since mid-September, rapid, seismic changes in consumer behavior have created the most difficult climate we've ever seen ... Best Buy simply can't adjust fast enough to maintain our earnings momentum for this year." Cool, but seismic changes? Brad, come on out from Minnesota and we'll demo a real earthquake for you. (Photo by AP/Paul Sakuma)
After coming under attack by pro-environment groups, Apple has tried hard to burnish its green image. But its latest laptops could ruin its reputation among the carbon-conscious. Apple has touted the innovation of its new "unibody" laser-manufacturing process, which carves the MacBook's body out of a block of aluminum. "The process uses a huge amount of energy to machine each case and then to recycle the material removed," an expert on computer supply chains tells Valleywag. "It's a much less efficient and there's a huge amount of waste than any other process to make the housings." The charge could be electrifying, if proven true.Apple has devoted an entire page to the MacBook's environmental merits. The company has taken considerable steps to lower the amount of energy used by the MacBook's display, hard drive, and processor. But Apple is vague about the energy consumed by making the MacBook's laser-carved unibody, and recycling the wasted aluminum. The Container Recycling Institute estimates that 3 percent of the world's electricity goes towards manufacturing aluminum — and China, where most of Apple's manufacturing is done, gets most of its electricity from dirty coal plants.
Another one bites the dust. This time, instead of banning a new app, Apple has denied a music streaming app called CastCatcher from releasing an update, due to "unreasonable volume of traffic." As with the past bans, the developers come out as the folk heroes, but an evil corporate overlord would have helped CastCatcher a lot. Here's how:iPhone music apps comes in a variety of flavors, from licensed tracks streaming apps — such as Pandora — to radio streaming apps — such as AOL Radio — to computer music streaming — such as Simply Media. But they are all mostly corporate owned. AOL Radio is powered by CBS, Last.fm is owned by CBS. ClearChannel Communications, the radio monopoly has its own iPhone app. CastCatcher's main feature was the ability to stream things called shoutcasts, a media streaming format developed by Winamp creator Justin Frankel during his anti-corporate punk days at Nullsoft. Some radio stations have used shoutcast software to bridge their transmission online, but most shoutcast sites are operated by hobbyists — ham-radio operators, amateur DJs, sports coverage, or talk shows. That means no revenue to share with Apple. And that means Apple has no room for them to hog AT&T's bandwidth. Why don't you kids go make a podcast instead?(Photo by otakuchick)
